Major Content Update - Dungeons, Climbing, Quests, Masturbation and POIs

We're here with our first UE5 Major Content Update, this comes with some expanded content, much needed bug fixes, engine improvements and Technical Work along with new quests and systems.

Opting in Don't miss out! Until there is content parity with the Unreal Engine 4 release, the UE5 Preview will be available via a Beta Branch on Steam, to access this, right click on the game in your library -> properties -> betas -> click "ue5_beta". You're in!

'If It Bleeds' & 'Shipwrecked Anubites'

The horrifying creature that roams the south of Medhen Island, slaughtering many of the Anubites, must to be stopped if they are to survive; no longer do the Anubites have to fall to the talons of this abomination - their fate now rests in your hands.

Make your way through the dungeon and learn of it's past, delve deeper and slay the creature. at the same time this update has added expanded dialog and quest choices for Shipwrecked Anubites, completing their story and allowing for sex options and new endings to the quest.

Solo Play

Along with this update we're adding the first set of "solo play" options. These enable players to 'keep the curse at bay', even if they don't feel like getting down to business with a partner. For now other NPCs won't react, though this won't the the case for long (I'm sure Damaris will be thrilled if you make a mess on the Taberna floor...).

These can be triggered anywhere in the world from a new radial menu[TAB], for all body types and for male and female genital options. PSA: The world carries on around you, jerk it at your own risk.

Toys will arrive in a subsequent update, allowing additional solo play options.

Pleasure Island Expansion - More DSS Scenes Available in UE5

Pleasure Island has received an expansion with new NPCs for you to have you way with(or them take advantage of you!) the adepts now have a much more established encampment from which to spread their message of lust. To this end we have brought multiple DSS scenes over from the UE4 build, along with a boatload of the more basic sex animations to help flavour the environment. The Anubite encampment should finally feel a lot more like the stronghold of a lust-cult!

Points of Interest

Heiffers Reach

It's not all happy news in Sabu, and there are some tragic new stories to explore in the fallen land of Heifer's Reach. These particular quests are only accessible before completing Behold (i.e. on a new game) because they're in the starting area, but should give existing players a lot more content to discover in the starting zone, setting the scene and fleshing out the world. Your actions in Heifer's Reach will have consequences in future, so choose wisely.

Tal'Senet

There's also a new love lust story POI taking place in Tal'Senet not far from the Taberna, giving you the chance to bring a couple together.

Climbing

Climbing has made a comeback! This isn't exactly the same as in UE4 but we are bringing back climbing more around the world. Don't expect to be able to climb everything, as we still need to keep some areas off limits for puzzles.

This implementation of the system also introduces the interaction based climbing system for shuffling along ledges, squeezing through gaps, and climbing larger blocks.

Character Customization - Male Demis and New Subtypes

New Customizations are available now! Male Demi-Jackal and Male Demi-Draconid. Girls get a new option as well, in the form of the Temple-Bred Jackal Subtype.

Gameplay Overhaul

We felt that some of the gameplay was feeling a little flat so there are a whole host of new improvments that will ship with the Kravenrook update.

Minor elements such as immersive UI and damage numbers (toggle in menu) complement the new softlock system. We've also improved parrying and added dynamic camera effects to execution moves.

Dungeons

In this latest push we've included a first taste of caves. Whilst we have made many more than we've released, we want to be certain there are no technical issues before we fully set you loose on them.

New Gameplay Settings

New Gameplay Settings are now available:

• Difficulty - Reduces/Increases damage received by the player for those struggling with the Boss Fights!

• Player voice - Have either player voice with any Form!

• Immersive Hud - Automatically Hides the HUD when you're not in Combat

• Motion Blur

Sailing Improvements

There are some major sailing improvements since initial release including the ability to get on the boat while swimming, get off while swimming without issues, some collision fixes and now the punting animations have been completed and implemented.

Expanded World

The World of Sabu has expanded, including an Overhauled North Medhen Island, new farms and islands in the Euphoris river giving you all new places to explore.

There are hundreds of new art assets, large and small. From the entirely new tomb kit, to the statue of the Bovine fertility demigoddess Hatha, bringing more fidelity to the world than ever before.

Behind the Scenes - Animation/Mesh Upgrades

In preparation for DSS 2.0 we've upgraded our rig, enabling some better deformation out of the box. This new rig takes advantage of the new breast, butt, and tummy jiggle-bones. All of these bones are also enabled for dynamic jiggle effects in-game.

Additionally we're midway through the process of rebuilding the body morphs from the ground up. This cascades through to clothing and allows "underwear pulled to the side" during scenes, as well as many other essential improvements to our clothing system.

These improvements resolve the long-running issues with cocks not showing when clothing is equipped, and now full "packages" will be visible - bulging beneath any revealing clothing.

You can expect to see some more "dynamic" poses for scenes in future, including the one pictured below, and particular improvements to the scenes involving exotic NPCs (Naga/Centaur/etc).

Behind the Scenes - Unreal Engine Upgraded from 5.1->5.2 then 5.2->5.3

In the lead up to our initial Unreal Engine 5 release, Epic Released Unreal Engine 5.2, which brought some much needed lighting improvements, performance improvements, some new tools and we were hoping it would fix some of our most frustrating bugs with the engine.

We had to wait until our update was out and we had time to release bugfixes. Following the release we decided that we couldn't pass up the benefits of the new version; we're happy to report that we've now completed the upgrade to 5.2 (after great difficulty and many four letter words directed at epic). We can confirm that this did fix two major bugs with the engine that drove us and you all crazy:

• Video Settings & GameUserSettings now Save & Load correctly

• UE5 Prerequisite installers are now working and should resolve issues some people had with the C++ distributable (and others).

...Then, because we just love updating the engine so very much, we made the move to 5.3. All joking aside, it brought through some major improvements we couldn't miss out on (mainly visual/performance improvements). The culmination of both of these moves took up a lot of dev time and has contributed to the delay to this update, but we definitely think it was worth it and something we couldn't keep pushing back to do.

What Next?

Lots of work has been going on in the background in addition to all of the above laying the foundations for our plans for 2024. Here's some of what we've been working on and what you can expect in the near future:

• Lovense Integration

• Prototyping "Paying Tribute" at Shrines (yes it means what you think it means) in return for a blessing

• Prototyping "Ambient"/"Quickie" Sex Encounters

• New Interactive Gameplay

• Adding more enemy types over from the UE4 build

• Added new plant types to flesh out the more lush areas of the world and to bring more colour/variety to the environment in general.

• Remastering various cocks from the UE4 build

• Blocking out the surrounding populated areas near to Mehden/Tal-Senet (we need somewhere to fill with potential partners)

• Design passed for various sex poses (blockout, not full animation - Will fold into DSS 2.0 scenes)

• Sidequests (Slavers Cabal/Guilded Fold early faction quests are written and Pleasure Garden side-quest is being worked on next)

Roadmap

We've updated our Roadmap, this is, as always, a non-exhaustive document of our plans that will be subject to change over time (it's simply not practical to put every single minor thing on a spreadsheet). It's in no particular order, but you can see what we're currently working on with the elements outlined in red.

We've decided to trim the roadmap to only the "base game", this does not touch upon content we may wish to include in any post-release expansions.

Thank you everyone! We hope you enjoy the update and all the new content and from the Team, we hope you all have a Fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Thank you so much for your incredible support!

Team Carnal Instinct

CHANGELOG

ADDED

• Added Dungeon System, including cellars, Dungeons and Tombs

• Added new Quest - "If It Bleeds", including the Dungeon and Kravenrook boss fight, adding new choices to "Shipwrecked Anubites" conclusion

• Added new Quest NPC to "Behold" - Anubite Captain now walks you through the initial part of Heiffer's Reach and shows you the way to safety (and the new POIs)

• Added new Point of Interest Interactions to Heifer's Reach (Farak & Ashalia, Frustrated Cursed Villager, Lone Villager, Mother & Father, Trapped Villager, Bickering Fruit Hoarder, Wise Old Woman, Cursed Poet, Couple in search of Lost Pet)

• Added new Point of Interest Interactions to Tal-Senet (Lovers Jamilia and Rashan, Fruit Farmer)

• Added new Point of Interest Interaction to Mehden Island (Ophyx Farmer)

• Added a new UI radial Menu for Masturbation, summoning the Aadi and more in the future

• Added Immersive HUD UI mode

• Added toggle HUD keybind

• Added "new items" icons to the Inventory & Equipment

• Added additional dialog and quest options to Shipwrecked Anubites including a new sex scene with Ameni and new endings with If It Bleeds

• Added the option for the Player to have any voice on any form, so you can have the Male or Female VA from the start

• Added shader pre-compile to improve smoothness as players experienced new content

• Added the option for Motion blur to be turned off : NOTE: this does not effect all cutscenes

• Added new POI Minimap icon to help you find the Point of Interest NPCs around the world

• Added some behind the scenes time tracking for future content

• Added climbing system, including mantling and scripted climbing events along ledges, up tall walls etc.

CHANGED

• Changed the RIG and Mesh used by every single model in the game to fix issues with movement, scaling, current and future sex scenes

• Changed behold to fit with the Anubite Captain walkthrough of the quest

• Changed Masquerade to be much better experience with the escort from the house to the Market with new locations and layout

• Changed Loading Screen system to work by waiting for all assets to load

• Changed player movement while in the air to give better air control

• Changed the Player preview in the Inventory & Cosmetic screen to work with Off-hand and Two Handed weapons

• Changed minimap indicator code to improve issues with discoverability

• Changed campfires so you can't be attacked while using one or near one

• Changed particles during Masqurade boss fight to improve performance

• Changed auto-save slots to 5 autosave, 10 quick

• Changed item description & Item comparison UI

• Changed the boat speed to be faster by 100%

• Changed Dialog UI icons for Return, Exit and more

• Changed the player UI to add damage numbers to attacks and crits

• Changed the equipment system so new consumables picked up will go directly in the use potion slot

• Changed the quest reward system

• Changed many UI icons including mount

• Changed the layout and location of "The Prodigal Son" quest

• Changed the combat targeting and lock-on system to aid players based on feedback

• Changed the torch Icon

• Changed a minor UI font issue on the loading screen

• Fixed issues with Chests and Items in Chests and Vendors Duplicating

• Fixed issues with Jamila and Rashan not having all Dialog Options Available

• Fixed issues with Nenu not having voice lines for some players after save/loading

• Fixed issues with players loading in under the map

• Fixed issues with "Hide Balls" not saving/loading correctly and I've added the option to hide/show in the Equipment Menu same as Flaccid/Not Flaccid - at least Temporarily.

• Fixed issues with some new Assets Causing instability/crashes for some players.

FIXED

• Fixed issues with Jeivad and Tekem

• Issues with performance related item duplication due to level streaming/world partition

• Fixed issues with custom waypoint markers

• Fixed issues with Hakor's dialog

• Fixed an issue with allowed formless to interact with Adept footjob sex scene

• Fixed issues with the custom mouse marker not working

• Fixed issues with leaving the campfire

• Fixed issues with Stamina depletion on directions other than forwards and backwards

• Fixed issues with the pause menu in Dialog

• Fixed an issue with being interrupted while dismounting

• Fixed issues with Swimming

• Fixed issues with the pregnancy shrine

• Fixed issues with the Fertility/Pregnancy shrine options

• Fixed issues with Hakor's Presence checks

• Fixed issues with Masquerade

• Fixed issues with Kemma's dialog

• Fixed issues with chests (NB: 02/12/23 - Dungeons have caused some chest issues under investigation)

• Fixed issues with male lipsync

• Fixed issues with HFH not auto-completing on all subobjectives being completed

• Fixed issues with Nenu & Damaris dialog and interactions

• Fixed issues with MyBrother's Keeper steps

• Fixed issues with Samia

• Fixed issues with Pregnancy debuffs/buffs

• Fixed a number of issues with Sailing

• Fixed issues with monitor scaling at higher resolutions/screen aspect ratios

• Fixed issues with getting in and out of the boat when swimming

• Fixed issues with aadi in deep water, water interactions with the Aadi should now be smoother - Aadis are still deathly afraid of water though

• Fixed various issues with swimming and deep water

• Fixed speaking animations with Nenu

• Fixed various issues with the worldmap

• Fixed issues with Asim and Ameni dialog and quest objective steps

• Fixed issues with stacking Objective and Quest notifications

• Fixed issues with morphs and morph interactions with clothes especially on female models

• Fixed issues with the cock tint not working for all forms

• Fixed various issues with existing DSS Scenes

• Fixed issues with DSS scenes moved from UE4, especially related to Male players

• Fixed issues with the Footjob Scene

• Fixed issued with Ameni's Sex Scenes

• Fixed issues with various quest objective Markers

• Fixed issues with Ambient Lines on four NPCs

• Fixed auto-save not working on Dungeon Exit

• Fixed an issue the Kravenrook Dungeon Objective step

• Fixed an issue with an invisible block being in the way during the Mother/Father cutscene

• Fixed an issue with the lever in the Kravenrook dungeon

• Fixed various issues with Farak

• Fixed issues with Cursed Horny Villager

• Fixed various interaction issues with "Behold"

• Fixed issues with Jamila

• Fixed an issue with World Partition

• Fixed an issue with the Camera in Ameni's Sex Scene

MISC

• Performance optimizations throughout

• Huge map changes to Heiffers Reach Village

• Huge map changes to Medhen Island

• Map expansion to areas outside Medhen & Tal-Senet including block-out for future quest locations